my fiancé and I are totally fragrance free because of my chemical sensitivity. My sensitivity level is great enough that I need to remove the synthetic fragrance that we both pick up from other people’s perfume or cologne just wandering around in public.

I have a Santicleana ozone injector or my washing machine because it’s usually great at removing the synthetic fragrance.

however my fiancé picked up the cologne from absolute hell while he was at a casino this week. Not only did it stick to his clothes even though he didn’t touch anything, it’s also sticking to clothes and bedding that his clothes touched after the trip. 3 consecutive ozone washes failed to remove it, it spread to other clothes and bedding in the wash. It also made my washer and dryer stink like the same synthetic fragrance.

Please help. This awful stuff gives me nausea so bad that I’m on the verge of vomiting ever since 2am last night. I don’t know how to get rid of it if ozone doesn’t work on it 🥺 Usually ozone works so much better than this 🥺

A family member tried to switch to a fragrance free laundry detergent to accommodate my chemical sensitivity (yay!) but she reported that the laundry smells GODAWFUL if it’s not coated in fragrance.

and this is a foreign concept to me because my laundry doesn’t smell like anything.

but then I learned more about where the permastink comes from and I realized…there‘s a whole lifestyle difference here, and it makes a huge difference in how much the fabric traps odors. I buy cotton, she buys polyester. I avoid fabrics that are coated in chemical coatings (for flame retardance or wrinkle resistance or whatever) and she buys whatever is in front of her. All this adds up to fabric either stinking or not underneath the fragrance - because some fabrics attract odors worse than others, and chemical coatings create tiny pockets for odors and bacteria to hide in.

this is really depressing to me because now I have to become an expert on how to remove stink from clothes and bedding that I would never have bought in the first place because I dislike owning high maintenance or stinky things. If I accidentally bought anything that didn’t respond well to washing with my relatively simple laundry routine (fragrance free detergent and ozone), then it ended up at the thrift store.

I feel discouraged that this is my task, learning how to deal with products that I personally never would have chosen. Discouraged that I’m going to be expected to treat polyester like it’s some precious thing to rescue - in my house polyester would have ended up in the trash bin or the donation bin in the same minute when it began to stink. Discouraged that choosing toxic fabrics and toxic coatings makes people feel like they need to choose toxic laundry detergent too - because toxic fabrics STINK with only a small amount of normal use. How is the world supposed to dig themselves out of this mess, if the mess creates more mess 😔

I’m trying to figure out a carpet cleaning method for my mother in law, she is being so nice trying to make her house more accessible for me (I have chemical sensitivity and her house is full of both synthetic fragrance and carpet that the synthetic fragrance stuck to)

would a “steam only” type of carpet cleaning method actually remove a lot of the synthetic fragrance? I don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars trying only to find out that it’s ineffective. I have no experience with owning carpet or the struggles that arise when trying to remove synthetic fragrance from carpet - because for most of my life I avoided both of them (synthetic fragrance or carpet). I just know that it would need to be a fragrance free cleaning method because I can’t handle putting any new fragrance on top of the fragrance that we are already trying to remove.

Maybe someone in your family or at work has asked you to be fragrance free to minimize harm to them - or maybe you want to go fragrance free for your own health- but you can’t, because when you try, there is body odor. I work remotely and occasionally tell people at work that I’m fragrance free - the most common response I get (from people who have never met me) is “what about body odor?”

Let’s talk about how to solve body odor without needing fragrance - it is very possible, and I sense that it is a very relevant topic.

Step 1, Please understand that fragrance is actually making the body odor worse in the long run.

Fragrance typically contains chemicals that magnify the scent of other chemicals - carrying other chemicals farther and faster through the air, making them stick longer to surfaces. These are fixatives and sillage boosters. When the aroma part of the fragrance has faded, the fixatives and sillage boosters are still there and still magnifying scents - but instead of magnifying the scent that they were packaged with, now they’re magnifying the scent of whatever they stuck to. And they stick to most things - including bodies. They are in your body magnifying the scent of whatever is in your body.

And body odor is a sign of a struggling liver - when the body can’t keep up with detoxing through the liver, the toxins start to come out through the skin instead.

Fixatives and sillage boosters are exactly the type of chemical that the liver might struggle with. The type and the amount are far outside the range of what was around when your liver was evolving.

Step 1 is to stop using fragrance on anything that touches your body that you have control over (laundry products, personal products, perfume, air freshener at home, etc) so that your body can start to remove the backlog of fixatives and sillage boosters. When the backlog is gone, then the BO will be only a tiny fraction of what it was when it was magnified by fixatives and sillage boosters.

Step 2, ditch the polyester (and most synthetic fabrics)

Polyester stank is real, polyester magnifies BO. and the best way to deal with it (trust me) is to drop off your polyester clothes at the thrift store and choose natural fabrics instead.

Synthetic fabrics like polyester love oil - they grab onto your skin oils and the compounds that odor-causing bacteria feed on, and they hold onto them. So the smell builds up in the fabric over time, and a “clean” polyester shirt can start smelling within minutes of putting it on.

It gets worse for our purposes: those same oil-loving synthetic fibers also cling to fragrance fixatives and synthetic musks far more stubbornly than natural fibers do - the exact chemicals we’re trying to clear from the body. So a polyester wardrobe is doing double duty against you: trapping body odor and hoarding the fragrance residues that magnify it.

Natural fibers will stay odor free much longer - cotton, linen, wool, silk - they will breathe, release oils in the wash, and don’t build up the same funk. You don’t have to replace everything at once. Start with the items worn closest to your skin and the ones that smell fastest (workout clothes and synthetic underarms are the usual worst offenders), and switch those to natural fibers first.

Step 3, Add an oil step to your body washing and hair washing routine.

Fixatives and sillage boosters are notoriously difficult to remove from surfaces or from the body, and they are engineered to resist coming off with soap and water. However, they are oil soluble.

That’s not great for your liver health (because oil soluble environmental toxins are the ones that your liver will struggle most to get rid of - they are the ones that bind to your bile, and then the bile gets reused for potentially decades).

But it does open up an easy pathway to remove them from the skin - where your body tries to get rid of these chemicals through your pores.

Any oil you already have on hand could work for this purpose, or squalane. Saturate skin or hair with oil first and then follow with soap or shampoo - you will remove any fixatives and sillage boosters that are currently stuck to your skin or hair.

Step 4, support your liver with supplements

Fragrance use - from self or from others nearby - is a very heavy tax on the liver, and it can get you into a state where your liver needs help. This is not your fault. The modern world is full of a lot more toxins than our bodies evolved to deal with.

Supplements that help the liver detox faster can greatly reduce body odor - be prepared for a “worse first better later” trajectory though because you are getting a large backlog toxins out of storage and then out of the body - it might be like cleaning the garage - making a big mess before it gets cleaner. Don’t be alarmed if body odor gets temporarily worse when going after the root cause like this - it is very temporary.

I like methylation supplements for liver support, because methylation is the chemical prerequisite for detoxing in the liver. Methylation support is not a “one and done” strategy; you could need a full stack of different vitamins and minerals to get methylation running without side effects.

The full stack I personally take is: phosphatidylcholine, magnesium, creatine, methylfolate, methyl B12, B6 (P5P), B2 (riboflavin), zinc, copper, and vitamin C.

That’s a lot to start at once, and you don’t have to. Here are the ones I take, listed in the order I’d suggest adding them if you can only add a few at a time - sorted by how much they help liver health specifically:

1. Phosphatidylcholine - this is the one most directly tied to liver health. It helps the liver get rid of fat soluble toxins that would otherwise just accumulate in the liver (also known as fatty liver disease). Supplementing it does not make methylation happen any faster; this chemical is what your body could be making if methylation was running.
2. Magnesium - this helps the digestive system get rid of toxins at a faster pace, and it’s also a required cofactor for a huge number of the reactions involved in methylation and detox. It’s cheap, gentle, and an easy place to start. I take di-magnesium malate because it can be mixed with juice and the taste is mild and neutral - powder is a cost effective way to take it as long as the taste is right. (not to be confused with magnesium malate, whose taste is much more tart.)
3. Creatine - another thing that your body would be making if methylation is running. This is used for repairs in the body. Not directly related to liver health - but creating it uses up about half of your methylation resource, and supplementing it can free up limited methylation nutrients to be used for other purposes (like detoxing in the liver).
4. Methylfolate + methyl B12 - this is the core methylation engine, and I add them as a pair. A heads up: these are the two most likely to give you side effects if you go too high too fast, so start low and work up slowly. If you feel wired, irritable, or “off,” you can take a day off and try again - or maybe add other things in the list first and try these later.
5. B6 (P5P) + B2 (riboflavin) - supporting cofactors that keep the methylation cycle running cleanly so the engine above doesn’t stall or back up.
6. Zinc + copper - paired cofactors for detox enzymes. Add them both if you add either of them - because supplementing one without the other can cause deficiency in the other. They should be taken at different times of day to avoid competing with each other for absorption.
7. Vitamin C - supports the whole detox process. This one is especially helpful for me on days when my underarm odor is noticeable. On days when I have a noticeable underarm odo, a large dose of vitamin C can take me to almost no underarm odor in only a few hours. Full honesty: I take vitamin C next to all the others listed above, so I can’t tell you whether it would work on its own - it might just be doing its best work alongside everything else.

if you don’t want to take methylation supplement, another good option is binders. Binders can help to reduce the body’s toxic load which can in turn help reduce body odor.

A note on binders (like activated charcoal, chlorella): I don’t take these anymore, but I used to, and they’re a reasonable alternative for people who want to reduce their body’s toxic burden but they don’t want to do methylation support. One important caution if you try them - I wouldn’t take them at the same time as the methylation stack, because binders grab onto things indiscriminately and they’ll likely bind up your vitamins and minerals right along with the toxins. Space them at least a few hours away from other supplements.

Optional: wash with low TDS water instead of tap water

If you live somewhere that has hard water (high mineral content) or a lot of metal in the water, you can probably get a big reduction in BO by washing hair and body with distilled water or reverse osmosis water instead of tap water. The lower the mineral and metal content of the water, the better - what this does is deprive the your skin microbiome from mineral/metal food. You are less likely to get an overgrowth of bacteria or yeast on the skin if they have no mineral/metal residue to eat. It also prevents an odd smelling chemical reaction between the mineral residue and your sweat and sebum. That reaction can smell chalky or metallic depending on what kind of minerals or metals are in your tap water.

This one might not apply to all locations, because some locations have low mineral content and low metal content in their tap water already. Lucky you if that’s the case!

It doesn’t have to be an expensive whole house water treatment system - I have a small countertop reverse osmosis unit for this purpose that makes reverse osmosis water and then heats the pitcher to a comfortable temperature.

Please add more suggestions in the comments if I missed anything!

This list is what helped me get my body to a better place where I smell good and neutral without any fragrance- I hope it helps someone else too. If I missed any suggestions that have helped you reduce body odor without fragrance, please add it to the comments!

I’m talking about fragrance.